For some background information, I, Nathan, live in rural Colorado with my dad and brother, Micheal. When I was five, my parents divorced and split custody, so my brother and I moved with dad, while my sister, Christina, stayed with mom. Before my parents split up, they raised all three of us together with my aunt, Abby. I always remembered aunt Abby to make strange, almost inhuman faces at me. To a four year old, this left an imprint. It got to the point where I would sometimes go into tears from fear. Now, my brother and I switch with my sister for the summer and visit my mother and aunt Abby, while my sister stays with my dad. I always hated going away for the summer, because I never got to spend time with my friends. Due to this, I spent most of my time indoors, playing on the old PlayStation 3 or just scrolling through videos. But one night, at around nine or ten O'clock, aunt Abby walked into the room in which my brother and I where sitting, and got our attention in a very unsettling tone. She proceeded to tell us some old, Texas urban legend about the people in the trees who steal, skin, and impersonate residents. She went into detail about the ways they could twist and warp their features. I could tell she was just trying to scare my brother and I before we went to bed, so I told her off and tried to get to sleep. But during that night, I awoke to my brother weakly shaking me awake. "L-look"... he said in a barely audible voice. He pointed to the door, shaking so violently you could almost hear it. At first, I could see nothing. But then, I realized the door was slightly cracked open. I had left it shut.
Through that crack, there was a single visible eye, almost drooping out of whatever socket it was in. I froze, for a solid minute, with the only audible noise being the crickets chirping through the closed window. Eventually though, I worked up enough courage to get out of my tiny sleeping bag and walk towards the door. As I stepped, ever so slowly, the eye grew wider, much past the point of any living being. When I finally reached the door, I already fell to the ground when the figure peeking through the crack scurried quickly out of view and into the hall. I ran back to my sleeping bag, fighting off the urge to scream.My brother was frozen still by this point, and took a good five seconds before responding to my return. "Watch the window", I whimpered, "I'll look at the do-" Just then, my brother let out a muffled scream through his blanket and pulled me to the window. To my horror, I saw the most mutilated and bloodied creature I, or any other person for that matter, would witness in their lifetime. It quickly scurried into the woods, going out of view. Neither me nor my brother got any more sleep that night. The next day, aunt Abby was not in the house. Mother called the police, but my brother and I sat on the couch eating waffles with a scarred expression. The police never did find Abby, not alive anyway. She was found dead hanging from a tree branch she'd been impaled on. They could barely recognize her at first, because the body was sloppily flayed. The reason they never found it before now was because strangely, the body didn't emit smell. The police did notice something odd though. The body wasn't new. in fact, the autopsy showed that it was at least fifteen years old.
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